Totally agree. A lot of it is based on trust and a future that no one can predict nor guarantee. We're a small company of 20 (in my opinion) great people and we just have a different relationship with our employees than most other business owners.

While I totally get that the future is always uncertain, I think past actions of myself and our management team (which also includes employees) speak a lot for how we are probably gonna do things in the future. Our philosophy is called Optimizing for Happiness, because we try to base our decisions on what is best for everyone's happiness, even if it means to sometimes make less of an profit as long as the overall profit is still positive.

It's difficult to explain how we do things, but to give you one example of the past. We had always very successful quarters, except of one where we couldn't pay bonuses. In that quarter people did not complain, but also offered us to voluntarily work less (and get paid less) to overcome this situation. In the end it didn't come that far but I highly appreciated it. And I think this can only happen if it's a give and take from both sides and everyone genuinely caring about each other.